Mucha, Alphonse

Mucha, Alphonse (b Ivančice, Moravia, 24 July 1860; d Prague, 14 July 1939). Czech painter and designer, active for much of his career in Paris. He settled there in 1888, and it was his centre of activity until about 1905, when he began to spend an increasing amount of time in his homeland. His output was highly varied, but he is best known for his luxuriously flowing poster designs, which rank among the most distinctive products of the Art Nouveau style. They often feature beautiful women, but have nothing of the morbid sexuality typical of the period. Some of the best known were made in the 1890s for the celebrated actress Sarah Bernhardt. Mucha also designed sets, costumes, and jewellery for her. He was successful in the USA as well as Europe, making four journeys there between 1903 and 1922; a Chicago industrialist and Slavophile, Charles Richard Crane, sponsored a series of twenty huge paintings entitled Slav Epic (1909–28, Moravsky Krumlov Castle). Although he is so strongly associated with Paris, Mucha was an ardent patriot, and after Czechoslovakia became independent in 1918 he did a good deal of work for the new nation (giving his services free), including designing its first banknotes and stamps. When the Germans occupied Prague in 1939 (a few months before his death) he was one of the first to be arrested and questioned by the Gestapo. After the war his work was long out of fashion, but interest in him has revived so strongly that in the popular imagination he is now one of the symbols of the turn-of-the-century era.